Lobo: Angel of Death
by Laurie E. Smith
Summary: Think you know Lobo? Think again. This definitely non-comedic series takes him back to something closer to his original concept -- cool, disturbing, and lethal.
1. Prologue

SERIES: Lobo: Angel of Death #0  
TITLE: "Prologue"   
AUTHOR: Laurie E. Smith   
RATING: PG-13   
ARCHIVE: Yes (with permission)   
FEEDBACK: Always helpful...   
NOTES: I'm not fond of what DC Comics has done to Lobo in the last several years, so I'm going back to something closer to the original concept -- say, his first appearance with the Justice League. This series was written for the "DC: Year Two" fanfic site (http://slayerfanfic.com/dcy2/), which seems to have vanished.   
SUMMARY: An introduction to Lobo, as written several centuries after the fact.  
DISCLAIMER: DC Comics owns the concepts behind Lobo and ALL related characters and retains complete rights to said characters. The original concepts and original characters introduced here are the intellectual property of the author.  
  
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_Excerpted from _Myth, Magic, and Power: Archetypes of the 21st Century_, by Niaoro Ahphezar Callex, 2807 C.E.:_   
  
Even in the vast ocean of stars -- across a million worlds and the widely varied cultures they had nurtured for millennia, from the blazing heart of the galaxy to the dim misty marches of each spiral arm -- some men were legends.   
  
In the early decades of the twenty-first century, several beings could lay claim to that title. Even today their names resonate with the power of layered myths: Darkseid, Hal Jordan, Wonder Woman, Superman... all possessed amazing powers, but to most of the galaxy's several trillion inhabitants they were distant figures -- characters whose exploits came to them through newspapers and vidwindows. Names, and little more.   
  
There was, however, one legend that moved freely among the races of the galaxy, the mere sound of whose name was enough to make them shiver and whisper like penned sheep when the wind brings news of the wolf. Nobody could predict when or where he would appear -- a tall proud figure, lean and lethal, who walked where he willed and dealt death as he pleased because no other being alive had the power to stop him.   
  
Lobo first came to the galaxy's attention in the middle of the twentieth century. His name, which had been granted to him by the Khunds, translated roughly as _He Who Devours Your Heart And Thoroughly Enjoys It_ -- a title he had earned in battle, and since he had no other name it served as one quite well. He was a skilled assassin, but if that were all there had been to him he would never have been known beyond the circles of rich men and underworld leaders who hired him to do their dirty work, and certainly he would not be remembered so many centuries after his destruction.   
  
Lobo, however, was unique. The universe had never seen anything like him, nor ever would again -- he was the last of a race previously unknown to galactic historians, the details of his origin were an utter mystery, and his contradictory aspects were as puzzling to the commentators of his own era as they are to historians today.   
  
He was in all ways an exceptional character. His build -- average height, slender, and smoothly muscled -- was dangerously deceptive: he could strike a man's head off, rip through a wall of exobonded titanium, or tear out the spine of a Cluster heavy starcruiser with equal ease. There was no barrier in the universe that could stand in his way, or at least none that his targets had been able to find before they were terminated.   
  
He seemed invulnerable, impervious to the cold of space and the heat of blazing suns, able to breathe anything from hard vacuum to acid, and resistant to poisons, lasers, and military biological agents. Whatever was thrown at him, be it bullets or thermonuclear missiles, Lobo would rise from the wreckage when the dust had cleared and proceed to fulfill his mission -- and now that he was _really_ annoyed, he would be sure to kill his target in as creative and painful a way as possible.   
  
There was also his blood-power to consider. Whatever other methods the Czarnians had used for reproduction -- and the girls of various brothels across the galaxy could certainly attest that Lobo had a healthy sex drive, if not fertility -- their primary means was probably parthenogenesis. If someone managed to actually injure Lobo enough to shed his blood, every drop of it developed almost instantly into a full-scale clone of its source. And if one Lobo was bad, fifty or a hundred of him were infinitely worse... especially since the clones, apparently mindless except for the urge to destroy, were every bit as strong and deadly as Lobo himself and shared his clonal powers. They swarmed over everything in their path before self-destructing in an explosion of searing energy an hour or so after their birth. (The loss of this cloning ability in the first years of the century made Lobo no less dangerous: it merely curtailed his ability to spread that swath of destruction with geometrically increasing speed. As previously stated, one Lobo was quite enough to deal with.)   
  
These purely physical advantages were matched by keen intelligence and a mind which, if the few telepaths who had ventured to touch it are to be believed, was as clear and as cold as black ice. Records indicate that Lobo knew at least thirty languages beyond the Interlac dialect common at that time, including Khundian, Riosan, Felinark, Terran, and the intricate gesture-based system of the Sirilan Codex. He had a practical working knowledge of chemistry, anatomy (carbon-based and silicon), starship mechanics, and piloting, and while he preferred not to employ weapons he demonstrated easy proficiency in their use, from archery and blades to plasma rifles and lasers. Add to those talents a will so powerful that even the much-vaunted power of the Green Lantern's ring could not overcome it, and you have a creature as demonic (or perhaps as divine) as anything outside the realm of the gods.   
  
(In fact, one religious movement originating on Niav'han VII in the last two decades of the twentieth century proposed that Lobo was an archetype of Death itself -- a living aspect of what some saw as darkness, but was in reality a force integral to the balance of the universe. The Niav'hanians embraced Lobo as part of their pantheon, which included Darkseid, The Guardians, and The Controllers, among others. Ironically, it was Darkseid himself who eventually destroyed their world.)   
  
Like Death, Lobo was impartial: he slew commoners and kings, women and men, infants and children. He worked for anyone with the money to pay his extremely high fees -- but pay they did, and gladly, because Lobo did not fail.   
  
Ever.   
  
The key to his success lay in his empathic powers, which enabled him to take the "scent" of a target's aura from an object they had touched, or even a place they had visited. Once he set his sights on you there was nowhere to run or to hide. He would track you across the wide wastes of space for days or months or even years, pursuing you relentlessly until you were so exhausted, so tired of running that you could go no futher -- even, perhaps, so weary that the oblivion he gave you seemed like a gift.   
  
No one knew for certain how many he had killed; it would have taken a coordinated effort on the part of several hundred planetary and intergalactic governments to tally up the dead. Many planets had their own particular tale of Lobo's exploits -- how he had murdered their good and just ruler; how he had slain the bloody tyrant and set the people free; or even simply of how heÕd made planetfall, spent an uneventful day or two on-world (perhaps attending a festival or an opera), then left as enigmatically as he'd come. He offered little conversation, and no one considered questioning him. After all, although it was said that he never killed without a contract, one could never be _too_ careful...   
  
Lobo was the last of his species, and he loved to kill: anything beyond that was random conjecture. Some believed that he was in league with the Devil himself, and it was from that unholy pact that he gained his powers; others speculated that he was a rogue creation of the Psions or an agent of Darkseid; and the Niav'hanians, as previously mentioned, named him a god. Whatever they called him, it was all one to Lobo; he did not seem to care what anyone thought of him, except insofar as they feared him. It was enough for him that sentient beings from one end of the galaxy to the other spoke his name, if they spoke it at all, in the lowest of whispers, as if they feared that he would hear them across the wide wastes of space and come for them, an infernal creature as white as terror and black as hate, with eyes blazing as red as the fires of Hell -- come for them, and deliver them from this life.   
  
An angel of death, indeed... but one with an inexplicable streak of mercy.   
  
It is fair to say that one the most intriguing aspects of Lobo's life, to both his contemporaries and to modern historians, was a simple yet essential contradiction in his nature. Lobo was a predator who killed with genuine enjoyment and utter ruthlessness, in part because he held every other sentient being in the universe in utter contempt. He considered them merely annoyances or tools or targets, and they had nothing within them that could penetrate the cold keep of his heart.   
  
There was one creature, however, that never failed to provoke a flow of pure and powerful love from the assassin: _dolphinus dolphinus stellaris_ -- the common space dolphin, an animal widely considered vermin and, at that time, almost hunted to extinction. Whole pods of these graceful creatures frequented the isolated asteroid belt where Lobo had established his base of operations, taking advantage of his protection; it was common knowledge that the assassin considered them his own, and would take swift revenge on anyone reckless or foolish enough to harm them.   
  
With absolute disregard for logic or his reputation, Lobo cared for the dolphins with patient tenderness: feeding them, playing with them, and, when they came to him in distress, tending their wounds or helping the females give birth. He treated them as his children, and they reciprocated his love with equally pure devotion and trust. Their beauty pleased him, and he was soothed by their songs and caresses; in fact, their presence was the closest thing he knew to the warmth of friendship, until --   
  
But I'm getting ahead of myself. This tale deserves a grander introduction. Any story of death and rebirth, of war and love, of demons and angels, princesses and dragons, of courage and transformation and the breaking of old curses, should begin as all fairytales do, with that time-honored phrase:  
  
_"Once upon a time..." _   
  
  
TO BE CONTINUED... 


	2. "The Ties That Bind", Part 1: Reunions

SERIES: Lobo: Angel of Death #1   
TITLE: "The Ties That Bind, Part One: Reunions"   
AUTHOR: Laurie E. Smith   
RATING: PG-13   
ARCHIVE: Yes (with permission)   
FEEDBACK: Always helpful...   
NOTES: I'm not fond of what DC Comics has done to Lobo in the last several years, so I'm going back to something closer to the original concept -- say, his first appearance with the Justice League. This series was written for the "DC: Year Two" fanfic site (http://slayerfanfic.com/dcy2/), which seems to have vanished.   
DISCLAIMER: DC Comics owns the concepts behind Lobo and ALL related characters and retains complete rights to said characters. The original concepts and original characters introduced here are the intellectual property of the author.  
  
SUMMARY: Summoned by the mysterious Director, Lalia Issan and Rhombus Blue encounter Lobo. (These characters will be Lobo's companions for the next several issues, so yes, they're actually important! Reading their story will heighten the impact of what's to come.)  
  
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"Because I could not stop for Death   
He kindly stopped for me;  
The carriage held but just ourselves  
And Immortality."  
  
_-- Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)_   
  
Once upon a time, on an emerald planet orbiting a binary star system, there was a lonely castle of white marble and glittering glass. It was set like an opal in the heart of a flourishing jungle, its tall bright walls reflecting the afternoon light that glowed on the foliage of alien trees and vines, blazed on extravagant flowers, and warmed the chasms of grey rock ravines. There were no roads -- this place was only meant to be approached from the air. Alien birds circled in the intensely blue sky, where only a few cirrus clouds challenged the emptiness of the high frontier, and the cries of small arboreal creatures echoed everywhere.   
  
The castle's outer walls were faced with balconies and wide passageways that let in a great deal of light and sky. This particular afternoon, on the fourth-level colonnade, a servant was leading two visitors to a meeting with his master -- and Lalia Issan, following him, wondered yet again: _What am I doing here?_   
  
It was still hard to believe that she was free of her father's house, where she had been a slave for the past three years -- forbidden to leave its high walls, forbidden to speak with anyone outside, forbidden to use her Healing gifts (so improper in a female, the shame of her family!) -- forbidden, in short, to exist. Until yesterday, she'd had no hope of anything except a lifetime of menial labour and contempt... but then, at dusk, a letter had come to her father from offworld, accompanied by a great deal of money -- and a request, from some unheard-of offworld lord, to purchase his unwanted daughter. One of her brothers had put her on an outbound shuttle, and now here she was, walking on a planet whose name she did not even know and feeling as if she'd been plunged into an ancient fairy-tale.   
  
Well, if this _was_ a fairy-tale, then she felt herself badly miscast as the ethereal princess. At 5'10" she was much too tall, and at 24 she was rather too old. Her skin was warm brown, the color of coffee mostly cream, and her eyes, dark blue beneath serious eyebrows, were far too direct (or so her mother had often told her) for a noble-born girl.   
  
On Desora women did not show their bodies casually: every inch of her skin, except for her face, was covered by a delicately woven floor-length embroidered tunic that clung to her throat and squared her shoulders before draping to her feet. It had been thrown on her just before she left (to have sent her out in her threadbare slave's tunic would have implied that her father's house was too poor to do better), and was intended to make her less attractive to men, but she knew that its loose folds did not quite conceal her slender figure with its roundness of breast and hip. Lace gloves sheathed her hands, and even her long brown hair, partially braided, was covered with a sheer white veil that fell to the small of her back.   
  
And so, better clothed than she had been in years, she followed the servant obediently, her doeskin boots making almost no noise on the stone floor, and drank in the bright world around her. What an exquisite place this was!   
  
_//You can say that again!//_ a voice in her mind chirped cheerfully. _//Makes me glad I decided to take that guy up on his offer after all!//_   
  
She glanced at her companion, uncertain whether or not to protest his uninvited eavesdropping on her thoughts. Rhombus blue immediately retreated a few inches, shounding genuinely contrite. _//Okay, okay, sorry! I keep forgetting -- you carbon-bases have a thing for thought privacy, don't you?//_   
  
He was a Geomite -- a jaunty blue crystal, floating at shoulder level with his long points directed toward the floor and ceiling, approximately a foot tall and seven inches across, filled with swirling sparkles of light. If geometric objects could be said to have an attitude, you would have called him cocky; certainly he didn't let his apology halt him for long in telling his tale.   
  
_//So where was I? Oh, yeah -- so the guy says, "Who's willing to come with me?" It's offworld work, right? So everyone else is just sittin' there --//_   
  
They passed another servant carrying a bowl of mouth-watering fruit. Lalia's eyes followed it longingly; on Desora, disgraced and unmarried daughters only got the bruised and half-spoiled dregs of the harvest, when they got fruit at all. Blue didn't seem to mind her distraction.   
  
_//-- too scared to think a word. So I up and say "Sure, I'll go!" Then everyone starts yelling --//_   
  
Lalia had already heard this story twice before, on the shuttle that had brought her to this world after they picked Blue up from an orbital space station two hours ago. Only half-listening, she turned her rapt gaze on the jungle that stretched to the horizon. To even her untrained Healer's senses it was filled with a million pinpoints of life-energy, like stars in the night sky, all of them in constant motion. It was glorious and utterly untamed, nothing at all like her homeworld: Desora was by nature a desert planet. She had never imagined that any world could be this... fertile. Such an extravagance of existance --   
  
-- and of destruction.   
  
A flash of movement drew her attention to a tree just beyond the stone railing, in time to see a small winged serpent busily wrapping its jewelled body around a tiny mouse-like creature. It had sunk long sharp fangs into the throat of its prey and was constricting around it, holding it still as its life departed. She felt the flash of the prey's terror and pain, white-hot, before she could look away.   
  
_//So I look at them and I say, "What the hell? Why not? You only crack once!" I mean, life's meant to be lived, isn't it?//_   
  
"Yes." She pressed light fingertips briefly to her temple, banishing the headache that the unwanted empathic contact had provoked. "Yes... I suppose it is."   
  
The servant led them into a large sunny lounge, with comfortable chairs scattered about the brocade carpet and a long balcony with gauzy curtains that let out onto the bright, breezy day.   
  
"Wait here, please. The Director will see you momentarily." He backed out, closing the carved double doors with a muted _click_ that hinted at expensive woods and superb craftsmanship, and the two visitors found themselves alone.   
  
Blue immediately flitted into the center of the room and hovered, spinning this way and that, while Lalia advanced more cautiously.   
  
_//Wow!//_ he exclaimed, _//Class-eeeee! We never had anything like this back home, let me tell ya!//_   
  
Lalia couldn't help but smile at his enthusiasm. Long ago, before her life had been destroyed, her teachers had told her that Geomites were a contemplative race, creatures of emotionless intellect who confined themselves by choice to their homeworld... and then there was Blue. "It's rare for a Geomite to leave Geoma, isn't it?"   
  
_//Only about as rare as it is for a Desoran female to be seen in public.//_   
  
Lalia looked down at the beautifully woven carpet and blushed furiously, reminded of her unconventional situation -- so far from home, without father or brother or chaparone to protect her.   
  
Blue twirled into a shaft of sunlight, sending reflections spinning through the room. _//Y'know, I could really get used to this "sun" thing! Is it always this tingly?//_   
  
But Lalia didn't answer. Her attention had been caught by an ornate bowl near the entrance to the balcony, just like the one the servant had been carrying -- and full of equally delicious treats."Mm! _G'dalyah_ fruit!" she whispered, going to pick one out. She cradled it in her hands for a moment, sniffing it, savoring its scent before taking the first sweet bite.   
  
Blue swooped closer to "face" her across the bowl, _//So... whaddaya figure the scoop is here?//_   
  
Lalia glanced up in surprise, her mouth full. "S'cuse me?" she mumbled.   
  
_//That butler was wearing a telepathic shield. Call me paranoid, but that doesn't exactly fill me with confidence.//_   
  
She paused, chewing thoughtfully. "I didn't _feel_ anything strange about him.." And indeed the man had seemed perfectly ordinary to her biokinetic senses.   
  
Blue was not reassured, and his mind-voice took on a whining edge. _//Yeah, well, I don't like it! Why's this "Director" guy making us wait?//_   
  
She threw the fruit's well-nibbled core out over the edge of the balcony, shrugging fractionally. She did not understand the Geomite's sudden anxiety, nor did she particularly care to. "Does it matter? He hired you and he bought me. We're in his hands now."   
  
_//Well, isn't _that_a Desoran way of looking at things?//_ Blue griped, but Lalia was looking into the fruit bowl again, clearly disappointed.   
  
"Oh," she said softly."That was the only one."   
  
_//Can you get your mind off refueling for a second? This is important!//_   
  
"I'm sorry." She picked another kind of fruit, far less tempting, and was about to bite into it when a soft _thump_ from out on the balcony caught her attention. She turned to look -- and there, almost at the edge of the balcony, was a single _g'dalyah_ fruit, just rolling to a stop... as if it had fallen from a tree above. Her eyes brightened.   
  
_//Oh, for the love of --!//_   
  
Ignoring Blue, she stepped out onto the balcony and knelt to pick it up, licking her lips slightly with an utterly unconcious sensuality.   
  
"Come hither, my sweet one!" she whispered.   
  
_//Lalia?//_ Blue's tone grew suddenly alarmed. _//I think there's someone --//_   
  
"Well, well," an amused voice purred from behind her. "What _have_ we here?"   
  
She whirled, still kneeling. There was a man sitting casually on the stone railing of the balcony, leaning back against the wall with one elegant black-booted foot propped on the broad stone parapet and the other dangling carelessly over the edge, apparently unconcerned by the long drop into the ravine below. His elbow rested on his raised knee, and there was a _g'dalyah_ fruit in his hand -- just like the one he'd tossed to lure her out where he could see her. He was neatly dressed in faded blue jeans that hugged his slim form, black riding gloves, and a black jacket of lightweight leather over a white linen shirt... but nothing could have been whiter than his clean-shaven skin, or blacker than the intricately-edged markings at the corners of his smiling mouth and around his narrowed eyes.   
  
Those eyes -- brilliantly red, without pupils or whites -- struck her like a physical blow. Paralyzed, Lalia could only stare back at him and know what the mouse must have felt in the instant before the feathered snake seized it: for this was a predator in blood and bone, to whom all else in the galaxy was prey.   
  
And all she could think was: _Sweet Spirits, he hasn't changed! In three years, he hasn't changed at all..._   
  
  
TO BE CONTINUED... 


End file.
